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NW: Let's talk a little bit more about your career. Because I'm curious to know where, I think some of that is where, Wendy gets that from you. But so you said you spend the most time in Pittsburgh, and that's kind of where you ended up. Where did you work in Pittsburgh?

MW: At the University of Pittsburgh.

NW: And what kind of work did you do?

MW: The nursing, students. Well, I guess what I was saying was even when I wasn't working, when I was at Columbus -- I got kind of off the track talking about my kids going to school -- I worked with the board of the YMCA, and we did fundraising. And so I don't know how I did it now. We had big sukiyaki dinners and had all these white women helping me. Sukiyaki is not something usually you do for a lot of people, you do it in a home. But I just went ahead and did that, and then I got acquainted with international women and I had a fashion show, and I had all these women come in wedding dresses and things that they brought. I thought that was pretty neat, and I thought, wow, how did I pull that off? [Laughs] But I've always had kind of an interest in a broader sense of people. We need to get to know people so that we get to appreciate people as human beings regardless of their color, their language, their customs or whatever. Basically, that is what's important. So beyond just having prejudice or bias, we have to start ourselves. So I think that's basically what was coming from Mom and her openness.

So when I was at Pittsburgh, even though I was working on the side, I still had this interest. And there was an organization which would, I'm sure in many cities, when students come in they find homes for them or help them. But I worked at the student health service, so there were many international students who came, who were patients. And I thought the doctors and nurses need to understand them as people more. I mean, there's a patient, take care of their sore throat or whatever, but when they come and they say, "I have a burning in my stomach," or something, the way they express themselves, things have changed now. So I decided I wanted the doctors and nurses and people to meet them more as people, not just patients. So I asked the supervisor if I could have a lunch during my lunchtime, have a bag lunch, and I called it Eat and Meet International Bag Lunch. And I advertised it all over the campus so anybody could come, not just international. But it was a chance for them to meet each other during that one hour, bring their bag lunch, no problem. I would make some carrot sticks and a banana bread, maybe. Then they would have a chance to talk to each other and get to know each other as people. And so they would share information about where they could shop for certain kinds of food or what was the best deal in doing this or that, so they shared. But it was mainly international people, we'd have some Americans come in. I had people who came from the counseling service, the vice... excuse me. So they would come and get to meet somebody on a non-professional basis.

So there were people who, I had one Chinese girl who was from Costa Rica, she didn't speak Chinese, she spoke Spanish and English. Her mother is from China, and she told her, "Don't ever get close to Japanese, they're terrible," because of the history. So she got to know this... she happened to be a journalist who came just temporarily to Pittsburgh to study, and she got to be good friends, and she said, "How am I going to tell my mother that I've become friends with Japanese?" But she did, and she told her about me. And you know that after a year or so, the mother invited me to come visit, so I went. And I lived in their home for a week or so. I thought, "This is worth the whole thing." Chinese and Japanese, this is what we need to do with the whole world, little by little. So I just got an email yesterday from Brazil from a man who had been to my lunches, and I had a man from Kazakhstan whom I helped to go shopping for things. And he said, "If you would come to Kazakhstan, I would invite you to my son's wedding." I thought, whoa. First, I didn't know hardly where that country was at that time. [Laughs] And I have people in Japan who have eaten in my home, and then one girl who married a Dutchman and is in Germany. I saw her when she had a new baby in Japan, and I thought, this is what we have to do, is connect with people. And so I think that was worth... I enjoyed it.

NW: Helping people make these personal connections and learn more about each other.

MW: Right, and I feel every day that's what we need to do, and not build walls. It's not easy, and we're human, so we have our own, we all have such biases, we don't realize how much it can be anything, we can talk well, but not achieve all that. So by living in Ann Arbor now, I moved from Pittsburgh to Ann Arbor after I retired a few years. Of course, they kept saying, "When are you going to retire?" but they quit asking me when I was going to retire. But anyhow, when I was still working, I had an opportunity to go around the world with students. There's a program called Semester at Sea, and junior year, there are students from all over the world who applied. And I thought, what a chance for me to go as a nurse, and I got the break. I was brave enough. Once in a while I get brave enough to ask for something. And I thought, wow, if I could go. And so I went and had the most wonderful experience, to meet people from... and now it's a much, much better program because they go to many more different countries. This was pretty early. And so it's kind of been in my blood, I guess, this business of trying to be connected with people. So now that I'm in Pittsburgh, I mean, in Ann Arbor, I've got connected a lot of things because of my other daughter. They're both... I don't know what to say, natural social workers, I guess, besides professionals. This daughter is very involved in racial things.

NW: Well one thing, another thing I did want to ask about, your own experiences as you were working. I know you mentioned that you became a single parent, you were working, you're raising your daughters. I'm just wondering what that experience was like for you as you are... because this is sort of during the '70s. So as a woman, as a single mom, what was that like for you, kind of raising your kids, working at the same time?

MW: Well, I didn't have time for anything else. My whole energy was in just making a living and seeing that they get through school. And I had a mother who was in another city, aging, and taking care of three kids while their daddy is traveling, working in a job that he's gone six days a week. And she had the full time job of taking care of them, feeding them three times a day, shopping, going on the bus. She had a much harder job than I did, and I couldn't be very helpful. I'm afraid I didn't spend much time and energy thinking about a lot of other things, except I was grateful I had a job that gave me security. So actually, I've become more aware of the world and social justice things since I've lived in Ann Arbor, which without realizing it, it becomes eighteen years or more.

NW: I'm sorry, I was just going to ask, what about as you were in Pittsburgh also? Because I'm thinking about, as you were working at the student health center, and you're making these community connections, this is also, it was kind of the same time that the Civil Rights Movement is happening, the anti-war movement, women's lib, all these big social changes happening. And I know you've said that you don't think of yourself as an activist, but I'm just curious how all of these social changes that were going on at the time influenced how you saw the world, how you pursued your own work?

MW: Well, as I told you, I did not get so involved in that kind of thing at that time. I think I've been more aware, but I didn't have the time or energy. But in the last almost twenty years, my goodness, is it that long since I've been in Ann Arbor? It's a very active community. And I've been very much more aware of social justice, and I get so many emails. [Laughs] And I send so many emails because when I stopped driving, then it makes it a little more difficult. But I go to a lot of meetings because Lori does, and I got involved in race dialogue, and I'm very much aware about white privilege. So I support these kind of things. I go and stand in the middle of Ann Arbor waving a flag about some of these things when I can. That's all I can say. You become less able when you don't drive, I think, but I'm kind of on a coattail of Lori there. And then I know that Wendy does things over here. So, as I say, I've had a very fortunate life, and I can't ask for more. As I say, I count them as my precious jewels. Who needs anything else?

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.